When Sherlock Was: Age 5
by Flame.of.Ishval
Summary: When Sherlock was not quite four years old, he noticed something odd about his nanny: she would spend most of the day in the rocking chair in his nursery and read little dog-eared books with covers featuring damsels in distress and shirtless heroes. He noticed something else, too: there was something between the covers of a book worth knowing, and he decided to find out for h


**When Sherlock Was: Age 5**

By the time little Sherlock turned five, he'd become a voracious reader. He'd already made it through nearly a quarter of all the books in his parents' extensive library.

The library occupied a large, rectangular room in the Holmes mansion. It had a set of heavy wooden doors leading into the main hallway on one end, and an alcove with tall windows hung with dark green velvet curtains on the other. Each side of the room was flanked by floor-to-ceiling bookcases built into the walls, and a singular mahogany desk with a traditional green-hooded desk lamp stood before the windows. A chandelier hung over the very center of the room, casting warm yellow light onto the group of leather armchairs below, which stood as if deep in conversation, in a circle, each accompanied by a small round table on spindly legs.

It was in this room Sherlock spent most of his time, among the musty smell of leather-bound tomes and the crisp new pages, still smelling of printer's ink, of the recently released. Perhaps surprisingly, Sherlock did not inherit his love of books from his parents, although his family were well-read and frequently found in the company of a good book, perhaps rather than in the company of people.

No, Sherlock's love of books had been set into motion by the most unlikely of people: his nanny, Amelie Moreau.

Moreau had been hired when Sherlock was born, with the understanding that she would be kept in steady employment until the boy was old enough to leave for boarding school, and she'd been his companion ever since. She made sure he got up in the morning, ate three meals and a healthy snack each day, went for walks in the garden, got to bed at a reasonable hour and, perhaps most importantly, annoyed neither his parents nor Mycroft, his older brother.

She'd shown little interest in Sherlock as a person, particularly since he'd annoyed her with his observations and stories from the minute he learned to speak coherent sentences, which was at an unusually young age. In time, she'd learned to simply nod and say yes in enough of the right places to keep young Sherlock entertained and ensure he wouldn't complain to his parents. She barely kept an eye on him as he played throughout the day. However, there was one thing she did that soon started to intrigue Sherlock: she read.

Amelie Moreau spent a large portion of each day nestled in the rocking chair in Sherlock's nursery, her face hidden behind one of many small, dog-eared paperback novels whose covers featured swooning maidens and shirtless heroes.

Sherlock had first noticed this peculiar behavior when he was a few months shy of four years old. He'd observed her intently for a few days as she made her way through several of the little books. At first, he couldn't understand why anyone would want to spend the entire day with their nose in a book that didn't even have pictures. Then, he noticed that reading caused something strange to happen to Amelie: it caused her to have emotions. Sometimes, there was a flush. Other times, a giggle. Here and there, a gasp. And at times, she'd wipe away a tear that had appeared in the corner of her eye.

Sherlock deduced there was something between the two covers of a book that had an immense power over people, something that might be worth the effort, and he wanted to understand exactly what it was. He began begging Amelie to teach him to read. Because this was the one thing they had in common, and because she enjoyed her easy job (and the more than adequate compensation), she agreed.

Mycroft, on the other hand, was not easily talked into giving up his old beginning reader books to his baby brother, although they were no longer of any use to him. After considerable prodding from his parents, Mycroft offered Sherlock a deal: he would hand over all his old books if Sherlock agreed not to bother him with requests to play. After all, he was nearly a teenager and shouldn't be subjected to being bothered by his toddler brother, especially since he needed to focus on school. Their parents agreed that this was a reasonable offer, but left the choice up to Sherlock, which Mycroft believed to be wildly unfair.

For the first time in his life, Sherlock had stopped to ponder the consequences of a decision. Getting those books meant having the keys to a world that was still closed to him. On the other hand, it meant no longer being allowed to ask his brother to play. For Sherlock, who was desperate for his brother's attention and affection, it was an agonizing decision. In the end, Sherlock decided that whatever could be found in a book would have to trump spending his afternoons sitting outside Mycroft's bedroom, hoping that the brother he adored would pay him any sort of attention that didn't involve the words "go away" or having a door shut in his face.

Sherlock was a quick learner and it took him no time at all to recognize individual letters, sound out simple words, and finish the first few beginning reader books. He then started on the books in his parents' library, a dictionary close at hand to help him understand new words, and by the time he was five, he'd developed a daily routine of going to the library after breakfast. Most days, Sherlock spent nestled in one of the leather armchairs, a book propped open on his pale, skinny knees. This made his parents happy because he was learning, and it made Amelie happy because she no longer had to listen to his stories or keep him from bothering his brother.

More importantly, reading made Sherlock happy.

He hadn't just learned to read, he'd learned that between the two covers of a book were entire worlds waiting to be discovered. He loved how many different kinds of books were in the library. He read the _Oxford Dictionary _from one cover to the other, reveling in the pleasure that came from acquiring new words, which helped him understand more of the other texts he read. He loved the smell and feel of the large, leather-bound volumes of the _Encyclopedia Britannica_, and found that he wanted to learn more about each subject so briefly summarized within. He read a book on Caesar's conquest of Gaul, which was quite boring, and then a book on German, which was difficult. (Amelie opined that German was an awful, guttural language and tried steering him toward learning _her _native French, with mixed results.) He read Goethe's _Erlking _in English and then, for good measure and comparison, in the original German.

That same week, he discovered a tome of stories about pirates and privateers that had been his father's when his father was Mycroft's age. In it, Sherlock read about a female Chinese pirate named Ching Shih, who intrigued him because he'd never realized there could be a girl pirate at all. ("What an awful thing," Amelie said in disapproval.) He also read about two Ottoman brothers who were both known as _Barbarossa_, Redbeard. When Sherlock finished the book, he was disappointed to find it was the only pirate book in the entire library, and he began asking for more books about pirates. Sherlock especially wanted more books about the Barbarossa brothers because he was desperate to have his own adventures with his own brother.

At five years old, Sherlock often found himself sitting on the cushions of his nursery's bay window, looking down across the lawn and into the woods, thinking that his life was the most dull and lonely in all of existence. He wished he could sail the seven seas, raid enemy ships with his fearless crew, and keep a secret cache of plundered treasure. He tried keeping a secret cache of table silver underneath his bed, which was soon discovered when the butler watched him try to hide a dinner fork down the back of his trousers. (He received a stern lecture on thievery and a week without desserts.) At night, after he was supposed to have gone to sleep, Sherlock would sit in the window and pretend he was navigating the seas with his sextant. (He'd read about celestial navigation in a book on sailing.) During the days, he often ran around the mansion brandishing a stick he'd brought home from the woods, pretending it was a rapier (he'd read about them in a book on fencing), fending off other pirates. It was during one of these battles Sherlock dashed around a corner, flourishing his stick-rapier, and very nearly stabbed Mycroft straight in the eye. He did manage to give him a welt on the cheek, which turned a delicate shade of purple by the next morning, and Sherlock found himself without a stick, as Mycroft had broken it in half and chucked it out the window.

On the whole, Mycroft was amused with Sherlock's pirate aspirations. "Some pirate," he sneered. "Five years old, pale as a sheet, and with that mop of ridiculous curls!" He suggested Sherlock should just walk the plank since that would be his inevitable end in piracy, and it could also reasonably be accomplished right in their home, if a suitable plank might be found. (Mycroft was later caught trying to sneak a board from the gardener's shed.)

Eventually, Sherlock even broached the subject of pirate captaincy with his parents over dinner, whilst begging for additional pirate books. His mother had nodded and yessed him without so much as looking up from her science magazine, and then suggested he finish his broccoli if he wanted any pudding. Sherlock's father was more inclined to listen, though in a way that suggested he was simply humoring his boy's childish fantasy. That night, Sherlock overheard his parents argue behind a half-closed study door. Sentences that stood out included, "needs to get out more" and "too much time reading."

It also resulted in something a lot more useful the next day: Sherlock got his very first real friend, an Irish setter puppy he immediately christened Redbeard.


End file.
